IN FAVOR-Sam D.
Dear comrades, I am writing as a cosponsor of the base bylaw amendment to urge you to support this modification. I believe in the core principles of this priority campaign reform. However, I do not yet believe we have the strategic-planning capacity necessary to build out realistic 2-year plans for our priority campaigns. That is where we should get to eventually, but as we have seen with many, many proposals made in previous priority campaign proposals, our collective judgment of our capacity and ability to complete these campaigns does not seem accurate enough. I believe that by adopting this amendment, we will be able to practice this new, more rigorous approach to campaigns in modest increments and, when the time is right, extend our thinking to multi-year projects. Please vote For this amendment, to strengthen the underlying resolution.
OPPOSE-Zachary T.
I am writing to oppose the amendment to cut the priority campaign time frame from 2 years to 1 year. As a co-chair of a priority campaign for the last 3 years I can tell you that no worthwhile project (outside of electoral) can be accomplished in a single year. We need to think bigger and give our campaigns the space to plan and execute their stated goals.
Vote No on this Amendment
IN FAVOR-Julian A.
I’ll keep my argument for voting YES brief: I believe that in a time of rapidly changing political conditions, it would be unwise for us to lock ourselves into a system where once the membership votes on a priority, it is by default approved for two years. Can anyone have imagined two years ago where we are today? Does anyone believe they could make an accurate prediction of what our priorities should be two years from now? It was only some 11 months ago that our chapter had to spring into emergency action around the occupation of the District: we were lucky that we were approaching a new priority campaigns cycle that allowed for Community Defense to apply, as well as that existing priority campaigns were willing to lend their resources to support Community Defense work.
To be clear, this is not an argument against long-term planning and deep organizing work. The success of the Aparna Raj campaign, greatly strengthened by the tenant organizing work that Stomp Out Slumlords has done for nearly a decade in Ward 1, is a testament to that sort of committed long-term organizing. We should continue to do more of that organizing, which deliberately puts our party in contact with broader and deeper sections of the working class. Limiting our membership’s ability to provide democratic input on our collective priorities is not the way to accomplish that goal. If a one-year priority campaign cycle leads to greater turnover of campaigns, it will be because these turbulent times will require our membership to reevaluate which political interventions we choose to prioritize.
OPPOSE-Gary Z.
Comrades — I am writing to members to VOTE NO on Amendment (ABA1) to the Priority Campaigns Reform package. The proposed amendment would reduce the priority campaign reform cycle to one year, down from two. While I appreciate the thoughtful analysis raised by the author, I don’t believe this amendment addresses the concerns raised, and in fact risks reintroducing the core problems the Priority Campaign Reform package seeks to address.
If a campaign is truly a priority for our chapter, plotting must include detailed timelines and workflows that span years, underpinned by consistent analysis and review. I can think of very few fights or battles that arise out of nowhere. In fact, most large fights or goals are actually observed years in advance. The benefit of the reform package as written is that it requires our members to propose detailed plans of action for build-up, mobilization, follow-through and analysis. Reducing the timeframe risks diminishing the quality of proposals brought to the chapter.
I’ve seen how diminished timeframes on campaign plotting have doomed our chapter’s successes. Consider our chapter’s fight for DC’s Ballot Initiative 82 back in 2022. Even though this campaign began a full year before mass mobilization, the campaign also actually ended too quickly. After the Initiative was “won,” the campaign quickly demobilized at end of the year. No formal analysis was prepared to observe threats to our assumed victory, popular edcuation around what was won never materialized, and follow-through fell on just a few engaged members. As a result, our opponents were able to regroup and chip away at our success just a few months after the campaign was assumed victorious until we were caught flat-footed last year, when Initiative 82 was effectively repealed by the DC Council.
We need campaign proposals to be thinking in years — there are very few fights our chapter is engaging in that will come and go in the course of a year. And I fear this amendment reduces the scope our campaigns need to be truly delivered on.
A final note: I appreciate that this amendment is proposed with intent to prevent failed or zombie campaigns from diminishing our chapter’s budget and focus. However, methods for liquidating campaigns are already written into the Priority Campaign reform proposal. The original package already proposes that the chapter can dissolve priority campaigns by a simple majority vote of the steering committee or by priority campaign committees that oversee the work. So there are in place checks to halt or close our live campaigns.
I ask members to consider by analysis above and VOTE NO on this amendment to the Priority Campaigns Reform package.
Thank you for reading.
IN FAVOR-Andrew C.
I support the amendment to the Priority Campaign Bylaw Amendment. I appreciate the authors of the underlying bylaw amendment trying to develop and advance the process by which the chapter determines and enacts its priorities, but I believe changing from the proposed two years to a one year cycle for reviewing and deciding on our chapter priorities better fits the actually existing rhythms of chapter life and better positions the chapter to respond and adapt to changing political conditions. I don’t believe, outside of exceptional circumstances, that relitigating chapter priorities midyear is necessarily the best way to respond to changing conditions, though that seems to be the main alternative put forward by opponents of this amendment at the last GBM. Our chapter convention convenes annually and priority campaign debate is an important part of the business we conduct together there. I don’t believe that putting the period for reviewing and deciding on the chapters priority campaigns on an annual cadence prevents those campaigns from setting goals that extend further than one year into the future. Keeping the priority campaign cycle aligned with the annual convention cycle is the best path forward for where we are now.
OPPOSE-Paige E.
The Bylaw Amendment as originally written was made with intention: this is a moment for DSA to be ambitious in achieving true material change in our communities. This requires more organized thinking and long term goals. This requires giving our proclaimed priorities not only resources but the time to build something greater than they could accomplish in the span of one year.
To structure ourselves around a sense of urgency will diminish our ability to grow as the path to a long term victory could be left to wither for the sake of a short term goal that we may not even have an immediate plan to achieve. The priority campaign structure should not be treated as the only way for us to act—the chapter as a whole, regardless of priority status, is made up of working groups that can and do take action to the urgent concerns of our communities. There are pathways for that work to receive resources in their own right.
IN FAVOR-Joe H.
I can appreciate that the resolution to amend the priority campaigns bylaw is attempting to add more structure, clarity, and rigor to the process of deciding chapter priorities. Among the changes would be a switch to two year campaign cycles. I believe that such a lengthy cycle is a mistake and that one year cycles better suit the chapter’s needs. During my time in DSA we have seen many emergent situations that substantially changed the priorities of the Left: the George Floyd uprising, the Pandemic, the genocide in Palestine, and the second Trump administration and ICE deployments.
Unfortunately, the left has often been caught flat-footed when things change. It’s important to balance our long-term work with an ability to meet the moment. Changing priority campaign cycles to two years reduces our ability to re-evaluate at a proper cadence and potentially locks us into strategic directions we might come to regret. One year priority campaign cycles allow us to plan and budget for the coming year and keep a long-term horizon for our work, without sacrificing flexibility. Campaigns can still propose a multi-year project and repurpose their original application materials when the time comes to reapply.
The one year mark is a great chance for campaigns to reflect and alter course if necessary. It gives new campaigns a chance to make their case for prioritization. Most importantly, it gives membership a voice once a year to debate the most urgent political questions for the chapter. I think this debate, namely, “what are our political priorities?” is crucial to the success of any socialist project and deserves structured consideration once a year.
IN FAVOR-Communist Caucus
It is undeniable that as a chapter we need to have a long-term strategic orientation towards the work of building socialism. We cannot be successful by taking a solely reactive approach to the changing political landscape. However, we do not believe that changing the length of the chapter’s Priority Campaigns to two years moves us any closer to successful long-term planning. We support keeping Priority Campaigns as subject to renewal and debate at one year cycles. That is why we wrote and suggest voting yes on the “amendment to the Priority Campaigns Bylaw Amendment.”
We do not believe that current planning difficulties are simply a question of thinking in two year blocks instead of one year blocks, and we do not think they reflect a simple process problem that can be fixed with bylaws amendments. The difficulties in building successful long-term campaigns, and to build the working class institutions that sustain those campaigns, reflect challenges within the chapter’s political and organizing culture. We need more political participation and discussion, more deeply relational organizing work, and an ongoing, dynamic analysis of the present. Continuing to debate chapter priorities once a year is the minimum starting point for building the political culture that will enable multi-year campaigns to be successful. A lot can change in a year and multi-year campaigns will, in fact, benefit from annual membership input and their vote of confidence. We support voting yes on the amendment, because one year Priority Campaigns give long-term projects the best prospects for success.